Ion Beam Induced Ni-Ag Mixing

Abstract

Ion-induced mixing is a complex phenomenon where many processes are involved: collisional effects, vacancy-atom transport correlation effects, surface segregation, preferential sputtering and chemical effects. Here we describe some experiments on Ni-Ag ion beam mixing, taken from the literature, which give information concerning the relevant mechanisms involved. To this purpose we discuss also a model for describing the mixing process where the vacancy-atom transport correlation effects play a major role in the dynamics of the mixing process. Finally we present some new experimental results which confirm at least qualitatively the model.